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Plato's Atlantis Story: A Prose Hymn To Athena: Tom Garvey
Plato's Atlantis Story: A Prose Hymn To Athena: Tom Garvey
Tom Garvey
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contests, and prizes a Greek would expect from such an occasion, including recitation (21B). Significantly, one of the two
gods honored during and presiding over the Apaturia festival is
Athena, in this case Athena Phratria.1 Welliver has aptly noted
that Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates are, in effect, engaging
in their own competition for Socrates, a notion that is supported in the Critias (108B) when Socrates warns Critias of the
mind of his audience and how well Timaeus, the previous poet,
was received by them.2 What Welliver does not note, however,
is that they are likewise honoring Athena by means of a prose
hymn of sorts (21A quoted above). Despite the temporal remove, the setting for the performance of the tale of Atlantis
remains constant: a festival honoring Athena.
Critias the Elder had related how Solon, a friend of his
fathers, first discovered the Atlantis story during his sojourn to
Egypt and brought it back with him to Athens.3 Solon learned
the tale in the city of Sas at the apex of the Delta from the
priests of the deity Neth, whose Greek name, so they said, was
Athena (21E).4 After a brief digression by the Egyptian priest on
the dereliction of Greek learning, Solon eventually begs the
priests who claim to know the tale of his ancestral people to
relate it to him. In a statement remarkably similar to Critias the
Youngers at 21A, the priest replies that he is happy to do so for
The other is Zeus Phratrios. For a more complete account of the Apaturia festival see J. D. Mikalson, Athenian Popular Religion (Chapel Hill 1983)
8485, and Ancient Greek Religion (Oxford 2005) 154155, 174; R. Parker,
Athenian Religion (Oxford 1996) 104106. On phratries, S. D. Lambert, The
Phratries of Attica (Ann Arbor 1993).
2 W. Welliver, Character, Plot and Thought in Platos Timaeus-Critias (Leiden
1977) 31. Cf. L. Brisson, Plato the Myth Maker (Chicago 1998) 4950, on 21B:
Although Critias the Elder is not referring to real rhapsodists but to
children who behave as rhapsodists during the Apaturia, there can be little
doubt that what we have here is an allusion to the rhapsodes competition
that took place during the Greater Panathenaia, for which see also J. A.
Davison, Notes on the Panathenaea, JHS 78 (1958) 2342.
3 The idea that Solon had visited the court of Amasis in Egypt was current in Platos time: cf. Hdt. 1.30.
4 See Hdt. 2.28, 59, 170, 176; Paus. 2.36; Cic. Nat.D. 3.23; Plut. Isis and
Osiris 9, 32, 62; Arnob. Adv.Gent. 4.137; cf. Th. H. Martin, tudes sur le Time
de Platon (Paris 1981) 251.
1
TOM GARVEY
383
several reasons: for Solon himself, for the sake of that mans
city, and above all for honor of the goddess, patroness of both
their cities (23D). By relating the contexts in which Solon and
he himself learned of it, Critias thus inserts himself into the
tradition of telling the tale of Atlantis as an offering to honor
Athena. Socrates later proclaims the fittingness of Critias tale
when asked whether it will suit their purpose or if they should
find another. He says that the story of Atlantis could not be
changed for the better; its connection with Athena made it
perfectly appropriate given the festival now being celebrated at
Athens, the Panathenaia (26E):
, , ,
384
TOM GARVEY
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your society, choosing the place in which you were born because
she saw that the well-tempered climate would bear a crop of
men of highest intelligence. Being a lover of war and wisdom,
the goddess chose the region that would bear men most closely
resembling herself and there made her first settlement.
10
386
allow for such a contest; his gods know better.12 Instead, they
settled the lands apportioned to them by just allotments (109B).
In order to uphold his notion of just gods, Plato abandons the
traditional conflict between Poseidon and Athena, transferring
it instead to the war between Atlantis and Athens, over which
the two divinities preside respectively as chief deities. In this
way, Plato is able to glorify Athena without abandoning his
ideology: the quarrel is removed from the divine to the mortal
level, allowing both gods to maintain their justness and Athena
to achieve her victory over Poseidon, albeit indirectly through
her people. In a prose hymnic style, then, Plato, through
Critias, sings Athenas praises.
The very manner by which the gods divide up the land in the
Critias, the drawing of lots, is yet another testament to Athenas
glory, for this is how the Athenians themselves run their governmenthow Athena and Hephaestus taught them to run
their government (109D). The politeia that Athena instills in
their minds is democracy, and the use of the lot is just one of
the more prominent elements and symbols of that.13 Once
again restricted by his notion of the gods justness, Plato omits
the traditional Athenian cult myth regarding Hephaestus attempted rape of Athena and the subsequent birth of Erechtheus from the Earth,14 opting instead for a harmony between
the two who, of a like nature (wisdom- and craft-loving) and
having the same father, were jointly apportioned Athens, a
land by nature congenial and suited to virtue and to wisdom,
12 Plato did not accept the notion that the gods fought or contended with
one another: Euthphr. 6B ff., Resp. 378B ff.
13 In addition to its use in political election and drafting for juries, Athens,
by means of the Delphic oracle, used the lot for such important decisions as
their ten new eponymous heroes during the Cleisthenic reforms.
14 For a fuller version of this myth and the conflation of Erechtheus and
Erichthonius, see Mikalson, Ancient Greek Religion 5859, and Roscher, Lex. I
12961300, 13031308. Accounts of the rape include Eur. Ion 267 ff. and
fr.925; Amelesagoras FGrHist 330 F 1; Callim. Hec. fr.260.19 ff.; Apollod.
Bibl. 3.14.6. For other versions of the birth of Erechtheus/Erichthonius
from the Earth, see Hom. Il. 2.546551; Hdt. 8.55; Soph. Aj. 202; Pind.
fr.253, Danais fr.2; Eur. Ion 2025.
TOM GARVEY
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388
These statements, paired with the epic character of the invocations of the divine mentioned above, clearly indicate a resonance between Platos endeavor and the epic poets, especially
with the Homeric Hymns. Morgan aptly observes that the Atlantis story combines both heroic and didactic elements: it tells
the audience how they should live their lives (on the model of
the Republic) and would thus have replaced Homer and
Hesiod as the foundational text of the society The fields of
poetry, politics, and wisdom/philosophy might have been
united in one person, [but] poetry must cede to politics.21 But
we must also bear in mind exactly what kind of poetry Plato
condones in his Republic, for he disallows the vast majority of it.
In Book 10, he specifies (607A):
.
But know that the only kinds of poetry that ought to be accepted
in our city are hymns to gods and praises of good men.
TOM GARVEY
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TOM GARVEY
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392
___
Department of Classics
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4788
tag8f@virginia.edu
ticians fill it with harbors, docks, and the like, which he equates with moral
decline. See P. Vidal-Naquet, Athnes et lAtlantide: Structure et signification dun mythe platonicien, REG 77 (1964) 420444; C. Gill, The Genre
of the Atlantis Story, CP 72 (1977) 287304, at 297; J. Luccioni, Platon et
la mer, REA 61 (1959) 1547, at 4346.
28 Gill, CP 72 (1977) 293298, points in this direction but, under the idea
of a pro-Spartan historical Critias, finds the parallel between ancient Athens
and contemporary Sparta a more convincing link than that between ancient
and pre-Marathonic Athens.
29 I should like to thank those whose encouragement and insightful comments on previous versions of this paper have strengthened it considerably,
most especially Jon Mikalson, but no less Douglas Olson, Greg Hays, John
Dillery, Kent Rigsby, and my anonymous readers. Any deficiencies that
remain are, of course, mine alone.